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August 2, 2006
WB: War Crimes Galore
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Thanks to mistah charley for citing this brilliant
note in Counterpunch of all places:
For anyone who actually gives a damn whether people starve or are beaten or burned to death, the whiny moralizing of the left is no longer a mere annoyance. It is also immoral. Lacking any remotely reasonable prospect of success, it is an exercise in self-gratification. The forms of this gratification may vary: for some it is simply a relief from great distress about the ways of the world, an outlet for painful frustration. For others it is an exercise in snobbery. For others it is a trip to fantasyland, glowing with visions of revolutionary triumph. Whatever its form, leftist moralizing places the moralizer’s own satisfaction over the needs of those in desperate straits. That’s not good; it’s selfish. It is unpleasant to admit powerlessness and to act within the political framework of an abhorrent system. But it’s the only game in town.
To pretend otherwise is hypocrisy – not the worst sin, perhaps, but one the left most loves to condemn. It is to act as if one really cares about others while pursuing a strategy that clearly will help only oneself.
following this gem.
Real compassion requires placing results over political puritanism. No one heeds connoisseurs of purity and agony. Nobody is interested in what we do or don’t ‘support’ – the emptiest term in the whole vapid lexicon of leftism. You can ‘support’ violent revolution all you like, just as you can ‘support’ socialism in the United States or fair wages around the world or a secular state in Israel/Palestine. “Supporting’ these things – or even more comically, ‘demanding’ them – has absolutely no tendency to bring them within a parsec of reality.
Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 6:20 utc | 1
The Israelis are successfully establishing for themselves the image in the mind of the world that the Third Reich symbolized earlier. What an achievement.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 2 2006 6:47 utc | 2
Two links from Debka.com to be read
with a grain of salt and between the lines . The later contains the following notable (inasmuch as coming from an Israeli “semi-official source”) quote
Olmert’s statement to the cabinet will go down as a misplaced, mistimed assertion by an inexperienced leader. By failing to understand the tempo of war, he was overtaken by the Qana disaster.
He also wasted precious time by relying on Israeli air might, its navy and artillery to defeat Hizballah. Even the ground forces sent in eventually were not correctly used. Instead of deploying small, rapid teams for lightening raids on Hizballah positions, bunkers and villages and moving on to the next, large contingents fought day after day against Hizballah strongholds in Maroun es Ras and Bint Jubeil supported by armored force and artillery fire. Hizballah made good use of the advantage it enjoyed of speed to regroup and return to the fray. A salutary shift in tactics was finally apparent Saturday night.
It would seem that the Israeli general staff long-knives are being whetted for Olmert.
The ad at the top of the page for Debak is also highly interesting: the Magen David Adom is seeking donations for
its “high blood alert”.
What is really happening is not at all clear, but apparently
blood is being shed in significant quantities on both sides.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 2 2006 7:00 utc | 3
from the “grain of salt” link, above:
DEBKAfile’s senior military sources report Israel is going all out in an effort to finally overwhelm Hizballah on all fronts and generate conditions for the deployment of a multinational force in South Lebanon.
The word “generate” has been put into bold type by me. I find the choice of that word interesting. So, is this the real goal here at this point? To generate conditions for the deployment of a multinational force (as opposed to, say, a wider war with Syria)?
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 2 2006 7:34 utc | 4
Michael Neumann, the author of The Case Against Israel (about halfway down the page) is a regular contributor to CounterPunch and has had several occasions to express this very same opinion, here quoted by Mistha Charley, lately.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 2 2006 9:26 utc | 5
The Demoplicans are seguing into a draft :
Experts: Not a single Army Combat team left ready to deploy. They know that their “clash of civilizations is going to require a lot more cannon fodder.
The Israelis say it will be “our fault” if they are forced to keep murdering children in Lebanon PM: IDF stays until int’l force in place. As b points, like the Demoplicans who have done nothing but lose to the worst, most criminal regime in US history and who blame Ralph Nader or anyone else they can imagine for their loses, nothing is ever the Israelis’ fault either.
And Lebanon first, then Syria and Iran, are just the spots the Israelis, I mean the Demoplicans, or shall we regard HR 921 as an official polling of interests? have in mind.
Can I be mistaken in my belief that even we lazy, obese, disinterested Americans are beginning to discover who our real enemies are?
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 2 2006 12:03 utc | 7
does iran manufacture weapons or resell?
Short but not sweet answer is “both”
Posted by: markfromireland | Aug 2 2006 15:14 utc | 8
Iran’s missile industry owes a lot to Ollie North who provided them with the cake/Stinger combo plus missiles that came by way of Afghani Freedom Fighters – all were apparently studied.
Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2006 15:29 utc | 9
citizen k: plus missiles that came [to Iran] by way of Afghani Freedom Fighters
Can you elaborate a bit, citizen k? Which factions of the Afghan fighters were close to Iran?
This is my source:
September 1987
The United States cuts off supplies of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to an Afghan guerrilla group after discovering that the Afghan resistance sold at least 16 of the missiles to Iran. The commanders who are said to have sold the missiles, Mullah Mahiullah of Nimrooz and Mullah Faqir-Ahmad of Anar Dara, were supplied with 36 Stinger missiles. They deny having sold the missiles to Iran and claim that the Iranians captured the weapons inside Afghanistan.
—Sara Shah, “Afghans sell US Stingers to Khomeini,” The Times (London), 20 September 1987, in Lexis-Nexis, <http://www.lexis-nexis.com/>.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/Missile/1788_1802.html
Posted by: citizen k | Aug 3 2006 1:59 utc | 11
Don’t know if this has been linked to before:
Maps of Israeli bombing in Lebanon
Don’t know anything about this site. Reader beware I guess.
Posted by: RIck Happ | Aug 3 2006 2:14 utc | 12